Many different styles and designs for greeting cards have been developed over the years and are used for announcing parties, conveying greetings, and for otherwise communicating feelings or emotions. To enhance its utility, designs for greeting cards range from the ordinary to the sublime. Some of these designs seek to heighten the appeal and presentation made by offering some mechanical movement inside the card itself. For example, we are all familiar with greeting cards which, when opened, have a fold-out into a three-dimensional figure. Additionally, cards have been made which can be assembled into various ornamental objects. Still other techniques have been used by card makers in the prior art to add a bit of interest to the card and enhance the card's ability to convey a particular meaning or feeling through a card design which goes beyond the simple flat folded configuration of the majority of cards presently being sold today.
While card designers have made attempts at incorporating paper folding, cut-out, and assembling techniques to improve the versatility of greeting cards, these have all been met with varied response. With a greeting card, expense can be a major factor. This limits the card designer as special, intricate designs require special treatment and, hence, increased costs due to limited production runs. Therefore, cards which have been designed to include mechanical features as described above are limited in their application and their salability.
The inventor herein has succeeded in designing and developing an ornamental greeting card which incorporates an interesting mechanical "pop-up" feature along with a free rolling, self-supporting design, all at reduced cost thereby making the card more desirable as being more salable than other designs in the prior art. In essence, the pop-up, self-supporting, rolling greeting card of the present invention includes a first portion which is comprised of a pop-up polyhedron which is, in and of itself, presently well known in the prior art and which is readily available in large numbers at minimal cost due to its present use in connection with different novelty items. A machine for the commercial manufacture of pop-up polyhedrons is disclosed and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,613,391. A pop-up polyhedron is characterized by a plurality of side flaps which are folded and which collapse on themselves to permit a configuration of the polyhedron in a flat orientation. One or more rubber bands extend between flaps on opposite sides of the polyhedron and provide the "pop-up" action by pulling the side flaps together to thereby unfold them and move the end panels into a spaced-apart configuration. By fixing a pair of circular panels to each of the pop-up polyhedron's end panels, the pop-up polyhedron will hold these circular panels substantially parallel and fixed in a spaced-apart relationship to provide a self-supporting base for the card. Additionally, as the circular panels have a round periphery, the card is free-rolling.
Although the pop-up polyhedron as described herein as the preferred embodiment is contemplated by the inventor as providing a low-cost card with "action" and which can be rolled after being withdrawn from the envelope, other structures can be interposed between the circular panels forming the wheels. For example, a folded and die cut box may be interposed between the circular panels and folded flat such that when the recipient withdrew the card from its envelope, it could be readily assembled by unfolding the box and inserting flaps into openings as is commonly done with simple cardboard cartons. Still another variation would be to provide two-ply paperboard or the like with one ply being scored or cut and folded such that when the card is removed from the envelope, the remaining ply would have a tendency to separate the circular panels. Other structures could also be used between the two circles in order to achieve the "pop-up" feature desired or which not necessarily "pops up" but instead may be assembled into the functional equivalent of an axle for separating the circular panels such that the circular panels become self-supporting.
In use, ornamentation may be placed on one or both of the circular panels along with an appropriate greeting, invitation, or the like. The circular panels provide a convenient surface to squeeze the polyhedron flat such that the card may be inserted in an envelope for mailing, or the like. As such, the recipient of the card has little advance indication that the envelope contains anything other than a standard greeting card. However, when the card is removed from the envelope, the pop-up polyhedron snaps the circular panels apart to provide impact to the message being conveyed to the recipient. Additionally, the circular panels provide a rolling feature for the card which adds to a recipient's enjoyment thereof such that the card may be kept as a graphic piece of artwork to provide amusement and enjoyment in and of itself. Therefore, the greeting card serves not only to convey an appropriate message, invitation or the like, but also, is a piece of art in and of itself which provides amusement and enjoyment beyond that of a typical greeting card. Additionally, the structural nature of the greeting card provides more opportunity for creativity by the card designer in conveying the desired message. For example, additional surfaces are available for use by the card designer and a rolling motion can be incorporated into a card designer's scheme for conveying the intended message.
While the more important features of the invention have been briefly described above, a fuller understanding of the invention may be attained by referring to the drawings and description of the preferred embodiment which follow.